


Extra Nuts and Odd Screws: The MCU Ficlets

by feldman



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Challenge Response, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-27 08:57:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 5,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5042083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kisses, punches, quiet lunches...bites, nanites, sleights of hand...bombs, balms, and the calms before the storm...shwarma, karma, and sex pollen pharma--these are a few of my favorite things, and here is the place where I'm keeping them as I write them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Quarantine Fail

**Author's Note:**

> Forbidden kiss challenge from bynightafangirl.  
> Originally posted on my tumblr: http://handypolymath.tumblr.com/post/130376976124/kiss-prompt-forbidden#notes

Tony clenches his jaw, watching her close the distance on her side of the plexiglass. He’s in clean jeans, but it’s the same singed hoodie he wore on the tanker, and the lines of his goatee have blurred into grizzled stubble. He is Not Fine, and that’s underlined by his straight balanced posture, as if he were wearing a three piece suit in front of thousands.

Balanced and braced. He looks like an old dog who’s found himself at the pound, squared up to meet the challenge of being left behind.

Pepper lets go of the IV pole and lays her palm against the wall of the quarantine chamber. She can’t imagine how sore he must be. The one upside of Extremis is the frankly ridiculous healing, even as the constant infusions wrest it from her body, loosen it and spill it out of her kidneys and pores and glands. She’s been pouring sweat since they started the line in her arm.

“This makes no sense, it’s a highly complex nanogenetic compound, it’s not sexually transmitted, and if it were, that horse is already out of the barn–”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Pepper is gratified to have derailed him, because the last thing she needs to deal with right now is Tony in a full strop. “Besides, it’s only for ten days, maybe less if I test clear for forty-eight hours straight.”

It’s nothing. It’s everything. They’d both seen her die, eyes locked as she fell into flame.

Each of them had fought on, had come through and come together on the other side. It’s what they do. But they’d both been rattled, to the point where Rhodey stepped in and dialed Romanoff on his own recognizance, bringing SHIELD in for clean-up because he was the only functional adult left standing.

“Pepper…”

“You’ll be fine.” She meant that to come out as conversation, reassurance. Instead it’s a whispered hope.

He checks his surroundings and darts to the outer airlock door, slipping inside with an exaggerated stealth that only draws attention.

“Tony…”

He pauses at the second door, not even looking at the Tyvek suits or the scrub shower. His voice is muffled now, coming through the plexiglass and not through a speaker. 

If he comes in they’ll hook him up just like her, flush him for days until his system is clean, ensure that she hasn’t contaminated him while she’s shedding this biological thermite out of every pore.

“It’s worth it. Let me in. I won’t drive you crazy.”

Pepper holds the handle of the door, to keep it from turning. “Only two of those statements are correct.”

He’s pressed against the door, chest and nose, his breath fogging it when he says, “How is that different from any other time?”

His hands look like when he came back from the cave, infected workshop scrapes and bloody cracks at the sides of his thumbnails from tearing at machinery in air gone sere from winter and raging fire. They took forever to heal, those bloody grooves, even longer than the socket in his chest, pulling back open every time he used his hands for months after.

Pepper feels her hand open the door before she makes a conscious decision, swearing at herself as she pulls him into the chamber and into her arms.

The kiss he lays on her forehead is a long press and several deep breaths, and it feels like she’s rescued him yet again. He pulls back and smacks his lips. “Oh, that’s _not_ your usual brand.”


	2. PDA: Public Display Agenda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kernezelda asked for the kiss meme: Public, Aeryn/John or Bruce/Natasha. I fully accept the risk of invoking a Feldman response.  
> Okay, so it’s neither pairing, but here it is anyway…  
> Originally posted on my tumblr: http://handypolymath.tumblr.com/post/131127786614/ill-ask-for-the-kiss-meme-public-aerynjohn-or

**Let’s be honest:**

**I.** The rooftop should not count…  
   **A.** for a number of reasons  
     **1.** one, adrenaline is mind-altering  
       **a.** which is why people chase it   
       **b.** and why Pepper does not  
     **2.** two, she’d unloaded on him with both barrels  
       **a.** not just her furious irritation   
       **b.** but her fear  
       **c.** her exhaustion  
       **d.** the imposter syndrome she couldn’t defeat   
         **i.** no matter how ruthlessly she weeded it out  
         **ii.** like mental kudzu, that feeling  
     **3.** and he just stood there   
       **a.** in his ridiculous metal suit   
       **b.** and the most earnest face she’d ever seen  
         **i.** much less on him  
         **ii.** maybe because it was on him  
           ***** like his ridiculous eyelashes  
           ***** or those callouses that snag the silk of his ties  
     **4.** and he just took it  
       **a.** didn’t feed her anxiety  
       **b.** didn’t blow it off  
       **c.** didn’t hold it against her  
       **d.** didn’t try to solve it  
         **i.** like he could even begin to handle what she handled in her sleep  
         **ii.** even though they’d both spent hours containing and averting utter explosive disaster  
     **5.** he just took it  
       **a.** let her vent  
       **b.** let her wig out  
       **c.** looked at her like she was amazing anyway  
   **B.** and she thought  
     **1.** goddamn you, Tony Stark   
       **a.** I had written you off  
       **b.** and you rise up with fucking…personal growth  
         **i.** like it’s another project  
           ***** from the basement workshop   
           ***** or your cave of purgatory  
         **ii.** and is this going to be a thing?  
           ***** are you capable of   
             **~** an adult relationship?  
             **~** with a peer?  
           ***** and how do you still smell good after all this?  
             **~** is it your fucking cologne?  
             **~** or machine oil and righteousness?  
     **2.** my god this is insanity  
   **C.** and even Rhodey  
     **1.** who’d voice-of-reasoned her mere days ago over the very same problem child  
       **a.** whose armor is ticking as it cools like a hot engine  
       **b.** whose tongue is also ridiculous, for the record  
     **2.** could only muster   
       **a.** a gesture of dismay  
         **i.** token  
         **ii.** brotherly  
       **b.** which, knowing his sense of humor and aplomb  
         **i.** he was a guy who’d parlayed a friendship with Tony into a career asset instead of ending up   
           ***** god only knows   
           ***** dead in a ditch, probably  
         **ii.** and handily won the game of party-trashing chicken that passed for an intervention  
       **c.** probably was equivalent to cheering them on  
 **II.** …because Pepper says so, that’s why.


	3. Makeout Stakeout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thassalia challenged: either accidentally witnessed or against a wall.
> 
> I did both, in a bonus scene for [Frog in a Blender](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4279791/chapters/9693444).   
> Originally posted on my tumblr: http://handypolymath.tumblr.com/post/130728523284/reposting-without-broken-read-more-link

Natasha is used to two broad kinds of people: tuned-out civilians and situationally aware spies. Banner continues to buck categorization by being both oblivious and hypersensitive.

This adds a layer of complication to cornering him for a groping, on top of surveying lines of sight and manipulating the tower security system, and it quickly becomes a point of the exercise, though not the main point. If he were a mark she’d be stringing him along, handsy and teasing, but this thing between them is twisty and her footing is unsure.

Sometimes she wonders if she’s the mark, and he’s proving he has more control every time he gets her going and then freezes, listening for footsteps that don’t arrive. Always calling her bluff.

Finding blind corners large enough for a clinch is the easy part. Keeping track of the rest of the team, the facilities staff during maintenance hours, his own whereabouts at any given time…that channel of info has been running in Natasha’s head since she arrived. Handling Bruce is where the learning curve and the strategy come in, and maybe that’s part of the satisfaction of keeping this quiet, just between them for now.

It’s not because she’s wary. It’s not because she’s still trying to figure out what the hell this is. She’s figuring Banner out, is all.

The first time she reaches around a corner, grabs a handful of button down shirt and catches him soft against her mouth and chest, it only takes him a heartbeat to get with the program. In retrospect, given the HVAC and that she hadn’t yet showered after hitting the gym, he probably scented her skin a few feet before he got to her, just enough to work subliminally. The next time she really does catch him by surprise–he gets halfway through an aikido block, she gets most of the way through a takedown, and they end up off balance on their knees with his fist cocked back like a poised hammermill and the knife in her hand already at the vulnerable neck he’s left wide open.

This time they freeze but the hardness she’s evoked is not enticing against her hip.

“Maybe not the best idea,” Bruce breathes, keeping his eyes on hers as she eases the knife down and away, as he lowers his fist and deliberately splays his fingers.

“Agreed.” She sheathes the knife at the small of her back, but doesn’t let go of his shirt. “You okay?”

He shrugs, blinks, licks his lips. “This a good spot, though?”

She nods, “Only need to worry about foot traffic.”

“Meet you back here in a hour?”

“Deal, doc.” The adrenaline adds a kick even later, but she changes tack and starts giving him fair warning.

Give him too much lead time though, and he turns into a flashing neon sign. This is bad enough when Clint smirks as he passes her leaning against a wall, followed shortly after by Bruce, breath already quickened with anticipation under his sorry attempt at a poker face.

It gets worse when Thor gives Bruce a considering look over the kitchen counter one afternoon and says, “I’ve found if you keep licking them, they only get worse.”

Natasha, in his line of sight behind Thor, stops smirking with intent and gestures in solemn agreement with her tea mug. “Sage advice, though probably too late.”

“Here,” Thor offers Bruce a handful of tiny tins of of lip balm from his pocket, and turns to smile pleasantly at Natasha; he’s picked up on the interplay but doesn’t care. “It’s winter on Asgard, so I have many to choose from.”

Later in a corner of the underground radiation lab Bruce tastes like lemony mango and as they kiss he walks her backwards until she’s up against the bright yellow doors of the flammable safety cabinet. He nuzzles his mouth up to her ear, “We keep sneaking around like teenagers…why, again?”

The door handles are jabbing her, so she hops and wraps her legs around his hips. Her back thuds against the metal but he catches her ass in his hands. “When I was a teenager, all my sneaking ended in espionage or assassination.”

“Right.” He’s nestled nicely against her now. “So the novelty of necking hasn’t worn off yet, is what you’re saying.”

“Think of it as reconnaissance.”

“Getting the lay of the land?”

Her reply is cut off by the chime of the lock, and they spring apart, flying towards his workstation to discuss something he pulls up on the screen with shaking fingers and a giveaway caught expression she wants to do terrible things to.

Natasha pulls the keyboard from him and gives it her best shot, “Have you looked at the immune responses, maybe if we turned the enhanced immunity against the enhancements themselves…”

Tony walks into the lab slower than normal, twigging on the tension and Bruce’s banked hilarity, looking from one to the other before settling on him with narrowed eyes and a dawning look of horror. “ _No._ ”

She nearly kicks Bruce when he responds, “No what?” but that almost mollifies Tony until the door to the flammable cabinet makes a _*pong*_ sound as the dent from her ass flexes back out.

“You don’t use anything in there,” Tony points, and actually takes a step back as his finger swings from the yellow cabinet to Natasha, “But holy fuck do you play with fire.”


	4. Class Photo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the 5-minute challenge, though it took more like 8 minutes. A snapshot of the team, old school.

Thor was unaffected, and so it fell to him to find them all once he had secured the sorcerer.

Tony came out when Thor called, “I am not clever enough to find you–-please show me where you are hiding!”

Brown eyes fringed with black lashes like a thicket, and a dark giggle as the boy slipped out of the access panel of one of the machines.

Clint came out when Tony promised ice cream. He was a thin tadpole of a boy, and he kept Tony between himself and Thor.

Steve was easy to find, once the dust of the abandoned factory triggered his wheezing.

Clint is the one who spotted Natasha, only because her hair was quite long, and was still swinging out of view after the rest of her disappeared.

She said, “You won’t find the last one,” and would not tell where Bruce was hiding.

When they were their right selves again, she went into the factory alone and brought him out.


	5. Surviving Space and Killing Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Jenalopepen on Tumblr: Thor and Bruce (and the Hulk) on the road.

Bruce shrugs.

It really is an impressive contusion on the side of Thor's head, given that he’s never seen an Asgardian bruise at all. Maybe the cold or vacuum of space had an effect? Either way, they’d made it back into the ship in one piece despite Hulk slamming him hard into the airlock with prejudice.

Hulk had weathered the lack of atmosphere just fine; Bruce is maybe hungrier than usual.

The server brings Thor a small silver lame pillow, an ice pack by the way he lays it against his cheek with a wince.

Bruce gets a dish of coral colored fluff that isn’t the shrimp cocktail he'd cheekily ordered, but Allspeak is tetchy with cultural things like cooking, so he eats it anyway. It’s good, but the texture is disgusting, and he thinks about the Monty Python bit where the Grim Reaper crashes a dinner party due to tainted salmon mousse.

Since they’re killing time, he explains the bit. Thor in turn tells him an escalating vulgar series of limericks about Death being cursed with an indefatigable hard-on.

His is funnier.

It distracts him from the funky mousse, but then afterward reminds Bruce of his own dismal romantic prospects. It becomes a thing between Bruce and Thor though, talking trash about Death, which really sets the tone when they finally get to Thanos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original Tumblr post: http://handypolymath.tumblr.com/post/138621255054/jenalopepen-handypolymath-jenalopepen


	6. Put Your Hands Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bluffing, the calling of bluffs, and skinned raw truth as a bluff. Is it flirting or Russian roulette with monsters? God, yes, it’s all of that.

If it helps Stark to think that the cavalry is coming, Natasha isn’t going to disabuse him of that comforting illusion.

She’s got work to do mowing down aliens like she’s working a scythe at harvest, and while _bring in Banner_ had been on her to-do list, she had dutifully checked it off once she had him ensconced in the helicarrier. Not her fault he didn’t stay there. She’d even tried to keep him copacetic, but he was prickly and averse to being handled.

What prickles at her is why he’d come along in the first place. She knows it wasn’t her personal touch--not everyone likes a redhead after all, especially one he’d made as an agent the moment he set eyes on her. Standard tactical manipulations weren’t simply off the table, they escalated the situation. So she’d resorted to high-proof truth to keep him talking instead of walking, or worse.

But he came anyway, and a small part of her brain has kept chewing on that since.

His seemingly obvious set of motivations - _don’t get angry/don’t get caged_ \- were clearly not the whole story. And they needed him. Whatever Fury’s ideas were about deploying the Hulk, or risking him aboard a multi-billion dollar impact event if he took it down in a pique, Banner himself was a key asset to find Clint and stop this inter-dimensional shitshow. So she kept observing, monitoring, and every hour added to her puzzlement. Wry amusement at Loki’s taunts, righteous anger over SHIELD’s weapon research.

Let’s not even talk about the sudden fast friendship with Tony Stark. Explosive, meet detonator.

Except not, which is interesting, and maybe a little annoying from a professional point of view. She’s spent the last two days pulling on a door and Stark walks up and pushes it open. Then the door pushes her back and says, _you want to know how this works? You can watch, but chill the fuck out. I’m not going to be handled by an amateur, and I’m not leaving just because you get a little twitchy._

And it turns out all the time she’s been observing, he’s been offering her exposure therapy. Unfortunately accelerated past her therapeutic tolerance by a lab explosion.

Though honestly, that was also in-theme for Banner.

It should bother her more that Stark is right after all, Banner rolling up in worn work clothes to offer his other suite of services.

His calm is nearly post-coital.

She re-calibrates her mental model of him, swapping out _don’t get angry_ for _atone_ , and everything snaps into place with that missing piece. That’s why he left India with her; she’d seduced him with the chance to do a kind of good he was uniquely qualified for…at first with his brains, but since they really did love him for his mind, now he’s willing to put out with his body as well.

She’s tired, and he’s constantly been putting her off her game, but she rallies. She lets out some of her own wry amusement, more truth like bait, and nods like, _S'up?_

He’s all chagrin and destruction curling like a smothered grin, like, _Sorry I got overstimulated and Hulked out on your thigh…now that the edge is off I’d really like to go downtown and ~~fingerbang New York~~ help punch space whales._

And she doesn’t say, _I saw your work in Harlem, you seem good with your hands…_

And his expression tells her, _I’m intrigued by a woman who understands strategic destruction and bounces back like a superball. I think she might get me…_

And she’s all, _Just don’t give us the clap._

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/rubberneck/media/2550428-hulk.jpg.html)


	7. Flashover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blueincandescence asked, "For the title meme: "Flashover." flashover n. the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you’ve built up through decades of friction with the world. (dictionary of obscure sorrows)."

Pepper Potts should have nothing in common with Special Agent Natasha Romanoff (as she turned out to be), their backgrounds and vocations wildly different–even before Potts read the SHIELD datadump and found out Romanoff’s horrific reality far outstripped even her most mercenary assumptions.

The thing was, from another angle, they weren’t so different. They’d come into the world as disposable people, and had been brilliant and willful enough (and yes, both mercenary enough) to survive and claw their way out of early graves and into the halls of power.

They were both capable of being ruthless and hard, both deeply aware of the consequences of being so, and both determined to find the path of the greatest good. They just used different tools.

“You know,” Natasha holstered her Walther PPK and flicked a nod toward Tony suiting up behind her, but her eyes burned into Pepper’s, “money is also a method of directing the behaviour of others.”

“Oh,” Pepper let a rueful smile loose. Framed by expensive lipstick were teeth she’d braced straight with grocery money, the lack of food probably one of the things that caught the eye of the modeling agency and that’s when things got more dangerous, but also started turning around. “I knew that even before I took a job at a weapon’s manufacturer.”


	8. A Pound of Flesh is Really a Ton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Atrata asked, "fic meme: a pound of flesh is really a ton."

Bruce is furious, but he can’t be angry. Which is not exactly correct, because the situation is too complex to be boiled down, and yet it’s far from nuanced. It’s a goddamned koan is what it is, an impossible thing that highlights your flawed understanding of the world.

Even now, he’s irrationally angry that Natasha took his choice away from him. He’d clung to the illusion that control meant something like normality. That respecting his choice not to fight would be the same as protecting it. That he could walk up to her in the middle of a firefight, and assume she wouldn’t use the biggest fucking gun on the team even as he placed it in her hands.

Objectively he knows unleashing the Hulk was tactically sound, that she was motivated to save as many people as possible, not just in Sokovia but the whole region. He understands the devastation of a fallout event, the crops ruined, the hunger and destabilization that follows. He didn’t know the city, he’d have been marginally effective at best in the evacuation. As the Hulk, he made a real difference. She choose to return to the fight, to be a hero, to deploy every weapon at her disposal to save as many people as possible. Hell, he even sees the public relations angle of doing so in the wake of Wakanda, out of some misplaced aim that the Hulk should be seen as more than utter destruction.

Bruce can see the merits, but the fact is that’s not the choice he made.

He hadn’t thought it through. He should have. He was in the room when she told him, heartsick and broken yes, but giving his full attention to her, aching as she cracked open and then slammed shut.

Basic autonomy will always be a luxury for Natasha, a beautiful shared fiction that she admires, and craves, but can always be taken away. Sometimes from her, but also sometimes by her.

Bruce can’t be angry, but he’s furious.


	9. Dr. Sock Sez That’s A-Ok

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thassalia requested for the title, “Doctor Sock Says that’s perfectly acceptable."  
> This is the story of when our valiant heroes get stuck holding the baby, but it’s before anyone else knows about Clint’s family. So he’s the clandestine expert that Natasha and Nick defer to, while everyone else thinks his relaxed battle-scarred parenting attitudes are horrifying.

Bruce pulls the poor thing out of the gestation canister, flailing and sputtering because they’d taken out the power for the base before they realized the focus of the main lab was this _baby_ in a _fucking jar_ , and the only thing that keeps him from hulking out is not that Tony makes a ‘filthy Bene Tleilax’ joke, but that Steve gets it.

“That’s incredibly inappropriate,” the Captain bites out, “be useful and fetch the Bruce Out Kit.”

Blankets, Bruce thinks, would make it easier to keep a hold of this squirmy damp girl, who’s not much bigger than a handful but is putting up a good fight.

“Hey, Steve’s up to Herbert on the list!” Tony says, “If he’s up to Lovecraft does that mean we can’t call the baby Mi-Go?”

Natasha unfreezes, but her face is still blank with horror as she watches Bruce curl the tiny angry newborn against his shirt. She lunges toward the control panel and starts breaking into the system. She will find out exactly what they had done, were doing, planned to do with that girl.

Thor comes to the rescue first, whipping off his cape and handing it to Bruce to wrap up the baby. He darts away, spinning the hammer almost nervously. “Not a lot of babies on Asgard, I take it.”

Thor catches himself midway to patting Bruce’s arm and instead says, “I’ll clear a path for you both.”

Clint meets them in the quinjet, and he’s a weird guy with a tendency to zig when most people zag, but Bruce is still not prepared for the look on his face, like constipation and amusement. “So I guess we’re stopping on the way home for milk.”

**Dr. Sock sez, “Good luck getting meconium out of your cape, sucker.”**


	10. Code Banner Cues* (an incomplete list)

### Code Banner Cues* (an incomplete list)

_***** post-fight conditions are necessary for cue a) to be noticed and, b) to work _

  * The scent of a strong cup of freshly brewed tea **+**
  * Puppy imagery, preferably sleepy but playful will suffice **+**
  * Explicit and sincere offers of refreshment (in order of rapidity of response time: ice cream, shish kafta, farmhouse breakfast) **#**
  * Smashing a boulder apart and spotting a neat fossil inside **^**
  * Musical cues are a mixed bag–refer to supplementary index “BB’s lab jams” which is the **verified non-opera** playlist **#**



**_+_** has worked more than once

_**#** confounding factors have not been eliminated, do not deploy trigger without confirmed backup method ready _

_**^** only happened once but it was an _Isotelus rex _trilobite the size of a turkey platter and **it was awesome**_


	11. Epic Fail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor attempts to patch things up with Loki through epic poetry. Loki is not in the mood.

_"Like a draft horse of the steppe_  
My love plods stalwart and true  
Plowing the frosty tundra of brotherhood..." 

**"Well...you can always blame the lack of rhyme on translation."**

_"The hoarfrost of your spite crackles_  
In my shaggy mane, sparkling  
weakly in the sun that  
skids the horizon..." 

**"Spare me your pity, My Little Phony."**

_"Sorrowful at the bitter cold_  
between us, yet I toil on  
turning over the earth  
in hope of spring..." 

**"...Racist."**


	12. Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catastrophysical asked, "I would love to see Natashas from two different universes (au vs. canon? mirrorverse? movies vs. comics? early vs. later iterations?) interacting with one another however briefly. Any other character would also be great, I just really struggle to get my head around her and your Natashas fascinate me." So here's MCU Natasha + Edmondson/Noto Natasha.

The smirk is what throws her, for half a second, and it starts a cascade of observations as Natasha studies the woman and is studied in turn.

The smirk is on the wrong side–but then Natasha is used to seeing it in a mirror, and so that’s not a difference but a false flag. The eyes are a watery shade that Natasha is immediately jealous of, they are hard to pin down to a color, and indeed could be easily shifted to blue or green or grey by changing outfits and makeup. More useful than her own hazel green.

The trade-off is that the woman has more freckles, with straighter, less saturated hair. She’s the same height with no heels–taller than Natasha. She’s recently held a black furred pet against her shoulder. The smirk fades and she asks, “Done?”

“Yes.” Natasha folds her hands in front of herself, feet planted in a rock solid stance, “You?”

The woman shrugs. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not delve too deeply.”

Natasha tilts her head, “Do you think superficial differences are all that separate us?”

“Let’s say the mystery is preferable to confirming it.” The woman mirrors her stance, a tactic that Natasha uses to put people at ease, but she suspects the woman is gently mocking her. “We’ve been so many people, after all, what’s a couple more Natasha Romanoffs in the mix?”

Natasha lifts her chin, feeling the sadness and determination tucked away behind those watery eyes, understanding the sentiment, sharing it, and viciously rejecting it all at once.


	13. Panties in a Twist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Short Fic Prompts, @thassalia asked for #12: "I've been buying the wrong underwear."

Natasha sits to Tony's left in these meetings in The Hague. He wonders if it's to keep her writing hand unencumbered, or if she's also sending a message with their placement in these rooms, where their fates and freedoms are being discussed and subtly haggled over. Diplomacy is not Tony's forte, but Natasha is well-versed in how social capital and political power flow and change the landscape like water, and he knows she's handling him as well. He respects her expertise enough to let her.

The meetings themselves are not where the work gets done, but where the alliances and deals made beforehand are field tested. But, like, Hammertech style, safety third field tests with unpleasant surprises.

It's been months of details and boredom and waiting on edge, a fight for their lives it seems only the two of them understand or fully appreciate, but Tony trusts Natasha to watch their six. The theatre of these negotiations doesn't surprise him, the tight control of reaction and response, the careful choreography in and around these meetings. Her methods, however...

This Minister is talking about his friends as if they're weapons, could only ever be weapons, and it's not until Natasha leans against Tony’s arm that he realizes how tight his jaw has wound, that he's got a mulish Howard expression on his face.

That he hasn't said anything yet but he still comes across as defensive, uncontrolled--that this Minister is poking him on purpose, looking to make him react instead of analyze.

“I’ve been buying the wrong underwear," Natasha offers in a soft attorney whisper, "My _mudak_ is numb.”

She’s absurd, a stone-faced troll with her tasteful Pottsian suits and badass rep and that peridot choker sparkling gamma green to remind everyone that the Avengers aren’t throwing any of their team under the bus, missing in action or not.

Suddenly it's nothing for Tony to ease his posture and let a faint smile leak through, clearly rattling the Minister in a way he can't confront openly. He whispers back, "It's not the only senseless asshole in this room."

Natasha nods curtly and leans back, slowly scrawling a note in her leather portfolio as she pins the Minister with a keen eye.


	14. Lab Junkie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Short Fic Prompts, @thassalia asked for #35: "You look like a monkey who's strategically shaved."

Tony concludes, "You look like a monkey who's been strategically shaved."

"Technically," Natasha replies instead, sticking another sensor pad on Bruce's torso, "He's an ape who's been strategically shaved."

Bruce smirks and she smiles back. Then he shifts his weight, as if it just occurred to him that bike shorts lack the obscuring drape of the trousers and lab coat he’s usually wearing when they low-key flirt in the lab. It’s an interesting response from a guy with enough public nudity to fuel a small online community. (Tony feels the _gammagoolies_ subreddit has far superior commentary, but the gifs on _fuckyeahhulkcock.tumblr_ are pure gold).

Tony sets up the scanning platform to capture data from the sensor array Bruce has designed. He wants physiological data to feed into the Hulkbuster's response systems, so he's wired himself up like an Olympian in a performance lab...to meditate.

Natasha snags the sensor helmet and hands it to Bruce, who's already tucking himself into an impressively limber lotus position. She joins Tony at the bench to link up the sensors.

"Here's a better question," Tony watches as Bruce's body visibly warms on the thermal scan, "when did you become such a handy lab assistant?"

"I have many skills," Natasha demurs.

Tony counters her _Xena_ reference with _Young Frankenstein_ , "And do you also elevate his platform?"

"The platform is your job, Igor."


	15. Overgrown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Khaleesa's prompt: overgrown

Hulk always have will. Born of will.

Will to live, even when Banner didn’t. Will to prevail against threats. Will to keep the heart safe, even when he couldn’t yet keep the body from harm.

Then, Hulk have strength.

Strength against father, finally–strength to shove back when pushed. Then strength against the universe itself, light and energy–strength to smash back when atoms shatter.

Hulk never have time, before.

Nat gave Hulk the chance for time, pushing him out, shoving Banner back. After only a handful of days across years, now he has years stretching behind him, a history lush and overgrown, as different from Banner’s as Los Alamos is from Kolkata is from Dayton is from Sakaar. Hulk earns his own keep, keeps his own counsel, and consorts with aficionados of combat. Hulk is a champion in a game with little at stake, and in the absence of pressure and loathing and confinement, Hulk grows and unfurls and becomes greener.


	16. Bitches Get Shit Done

"I don't believe we've met," Loki's chagrin looks genuine, and he reacts to Thor's annoyed double-take with perfect confusion. If you think he'd let anyone know he was confused in the first place.

The last time Natasha got _do I know you?_ was years ago in a Prague discotheque, and even then it was a weak Eurotrash move and her mark knew it before he bolted toward an exit. Natasha's had a rough few years, but that's only boosted her ability to be missed or recognized as she chooses, so she takes a beat to ponder.

Loki doesn't lose his nerve. "I confess, I sometimes have trouble telling Midgardians apart." He leans down to her eye level, as one would not to intimidate a child, "Did you replace the cheeky redhead?"

"I'm so sorry," She asides to Thor, "Asgardians are so powerful and long-lived, I didn't realize their memories also fail in old age." Turning back to Loki, who's straightened to his full height, she quotes Katherine the Shrew, " _Now I perceive thou art a reverend father; Pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking_." Her smile is both tactical and genuine, "We did meet briefly, but you were distraught at the time, and mispronounced my name."

Names have power. She's fully aware this is a glove slap.

"The only thing that has failed me is perhaps Allspeak," Loki's apologizes, "Prosti, Nataliya Alianovna Romanova." His accent is commendable, his smarmy delivery deliberately unforgivable.

"Haven't heard that one in a long while," Nat smirks with a little huff through her nose. "No, I meant the ' _mewling quim_ ' crack. Way off the mark, there, but you didn't know any better. Hey, which nom de guerre is your flavor this week--Odinson? Laufeyson?"

Loki bites off a grin despite himself and lays hand on his chest, "Loki Friggjarson. And you are?"

Her chin dips slightly, the mere suggestion of a bow more dismissive than skipping it, "Natasha Romanoff, vicious cunt."


End file.
